Arundel Festival and Amberley Museum Ale & Music Festival

For anybody who hasn't received this information by email, here's the latest news from John:

We have two possibilities for August to encourage new members to join us by knocking the occasional pair of hosiery off the general public!

Arundel Festival, Folk Weekend, Saturday 16th, 3.00pm to 5.00pm, acoustic stage Tarrant Square, Tarrant Street:

I should explain why this different date has suddenly appeared when the blog and the flyers put us there on the 24th. A miscommunication with the organisers (both sides to blame), despite us having appeared on the same weekend for the last two years, left us with no performance slot on that Sunday. We have been given the above slot because a 'noir progressive acoustic folk band' have cancelled leaving a void in the programme for the day which would enable us to provide a less 'Goth' regressive joyful range of our most practised repertoire to the assembled multitude! I know it's very short notice, but if you could register your ability to perform at the event by Wednesday evening at the latest to me, I can then confirm with the organisers that we will be there, otherwise there will be a lonely empty stage.


Amberley Museum Ale, Food & Music Festival, Sunday 31st, 12.00 - 13.00hrs (note the possibly longer slot), on the amplified Bus Stage adjacent to the 'Limeburners Restaurant':

No problem here for members already volunteering to appear, but I need to provide Ruth with a final list of performers' names for ticking off at the entrance, with a cut off date for emailing me of the 23rd. Singers wishing to attend the event after midnight on that date will unfortunately have to pay the full entrance fee on the day.

John C

Song List for Amberley

NB The list below was compiled before we heard from John about the possibility of a longer slot.

Here is the song list for the Amberley event on 31st August.

This is only a suggestion of running order, making sure we start with a song with which we are all very familiar and ending, before "A Jolly Good Song", with an upbeat song and again one with which we are all confident.

1. Twankey Dillo
2. On Sussex Hills
3. Fathom The Bowl
4. Gooches Beer
5. West Sussex Drinking Song
6. Glorious Ale
7. The Nightingale Song
8. Rolling Home
9. Thousands Or More
10. Half A Pint Of Burtons

Amaryllis

Extra Session At The Beechwood

Here are a couple of updates for our public performances at Arundel and Amberley:

• Arundel Festival, 24th August: We are still not exactly sure what performance opportunities are being offered to us and consequently a decision has has not yet been made on whether we will be performing there. There will be more information here when it's available. If you would like to sing at Arundel, please give your name to John C as the number of singers wanting to participate may influence our decision on whether to perform.
• Amberley Museum Ale, Food & Music Festival, 31st August: There will be an extra practice session at the Beechwood, Worthing on 20th August to prepare us for our performance at this event (and also for Arundel if we are performing there). If you are going to sing at Amberley, please give your name to John C otherwise you may have to pay to get in!

SUN Event at Falmer Campus – 12 July 2014

The Sussex U3A Network held an open day to share an exhibition of work that many local groups had produced for their South Downs Project and organisers had invited us to join in – probably because of our name. About 22 attended in the Checkland Building at Brighton University and could enjoy a variety of ways to celebrate our area through Geology, Natural History, Walking groups, Art and Music.


taken by a member of the audience

In the Asa Briggs Theatre, at 2pm, a group of singers presented a set of folk songs – they came from seven different U3A groups and had never rehearsed as a whole before and stood in a straight line. Then a play reading finished early and we were ushered forward to start ahead of schedule before the audience wandered off. Tina acted as pitch finder and time keeper while Adrian introduced the songs. We were an equal number of men and ladies, which included Margaret and Mac from the Lewes Group who were singing at their first SDFS event. Our performance was well received and Adrian managed to sell another 3 CDs. We were followed by the Crowborough U3A Choir dressed in black and white with keyboard scarves or ties with a repertoire of old favourites from Shows (which were not connected to the South Downs).

We were wearing a variety of blues, greens and white and standing behind our beautiful banner.

The theatre and microphones were an advantage for the sound, but with the glass windows behind us photos taken did not reproduce well. Altogether, I think we appeared better prepared and put our songs across in rather a professional manner. Well done everyone.

Margo



Videos Added

YouTube videos have now been added to some of our event reports, specifically:

• 12-13 July 2014 – Schwyzertag Festival
• 16 June 2013 – CD Launch and Sussex Day Celebrations at WDOAM
• 23 March 2013 – Burpham Recordings

Keith D

Photos

Almost all the photos that have been submitted to the blog can now be seen here if you know where to look - and I am about to tell you!

When I looked through the photos Adrian passed on to me that did not yet appear on this blog, I noticed that almost every one related to some particular event. So in the menu above, in place of PHOTOS you will now find EVENT REPORTS. Click on this and you'll see - guess what? - reports for all our previous events (going back to March 2012), many of which include photos.

If you're one of the people who has submitted photos, you may notice that a few have been edited to straighten them up, alter the contrast, or in one set of indoor photos to remove the colour completely (I was present when these were taken and remember the room being partly illuminated by the red glow of heaters on the walls - the original photos are correspondingly very red!). Please tell me if you don't like what I've done.

Some of the event report posts are reconstructions of pages previously produced by Adrian, but which he later deleted from the blog (due to restrictions on the number of 'static pages' that we are allowed). Some others are completely new and I have constructed these from the few fragments of information that I have been able to find - some posts have only photos and some have only a sentence or two. In all there are 16 event report posts which weren't here a week ago. If you are able to provide any useful additional information, or corrections, please contact me.

Also contact me if you have provided any of the photos and would like to be acknowledged. Unfortunately I do not have any information regarding the sources of photos other than what you can already see here.

More photos are welcome!

Keith D (contact me at southdownsfolksingers@gmail.com)

Local Group News – Easebourne Thursdays confirmed venue from August 2014

Following the positive feedback received after meetings at The Three Moles, Selham in June and July we are moving to this location from August until further notice.
The Three Moles is a small traditional pub about a mile south of the A272 between Petworth and Midhurst. Turn off the A272 opposite the Halfway Bridge Inn and follow the road south for just over a mile. There is a hump back bridge soon after the entrance to WL West's wood yard so take care!
Post Code GU28 0PN

Shirley

Here we are in today's Sussex Express

Here's a press cutting from The Sussex Express, Friday 18th July, 2014. The caption beneath the photo reads "The South Downs Folk Singers, seen here in traditional dress, were among several groups who travelled to Waldshut-Tiengen, Lewes' German twin town, to take part in the Scwyzertag (sic) celebration marking the victory over the Swiss in 1415. The picture shows (left to right) David Garrard, Sue Garrard, Debbie Deadman, Cllr John Lamb, Gaynor Lamb, Steve Allbury, Alan Wheeler and Anne Wheeler. Their singing was described as 'lusty' by the local paper."

Well done to everybody who went for representing us in such excellent fashion.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Local Group Report – Easebourne Thursday 17th July 2014

Twelve stalwart singers (Henny & Steve, Angela & Phil, Anne & Alan, Sue & Dave, Les, Julie, Stephen A, and Sue's mum Muriel) attended a most enjoyable sing at the Three Moles in Selham. The weather was warm and sunny and on arrival we sat outside on the terrace enjoying a cool drink before coming indoors to practise our singing. We sang songs mostly of a drinking nature – in preparation for the Arundel ,Amberley and Bognor Festivals: Fathom the Bowl, Country Life, Twanky Dillo, the Constant Lovers, Oh Good Ale, Ale Glorious Ale, Gooches' Beer, Drink Old England Dry, the West Sussex Drinking Song, Thousands or More, and Stormy Winds, before finishing with a first go at Kipling's The Run Of the Downs and a rousing version of The Mermaid led by no other than Captain Hebley himself! Most of the patrons of the pub sat outside but they were most complimentary about our singing which wafted out of the open doors and windows into the evening air. The pub's acoustic is very good, the landlords – James and Emma – are very welcoming and we all agreed that it is indeed a very nice venue for our monthly sing. Watch this space for confirmation of where we will meet next month.

David G

Schwyzertag Festival

The trip to the Schwyzertag festival in Tiengen near the Rhine in Southern Germany was a great success. A group of eight of us – Debbie Deadman, Steve Allbury, Anne and Alan Wheeler, Sue and David Garrard, Gaynor and John Lamb – had a very enjoyable four days of singing, beer, sightseeing and warm German hospitality. We were put up in a guesthouse a few kilometres outside the town where we were really looked after by the patron Tomas who even cooked us a meal on his evening off.

Fortunately we had two German speakers: David and Steve. David led the singing and introduced our songs in German, his jokes even raised a laugh. The festival, which commemorates the defeat of Swiss invaders in 1415, was well attended and we found ourselves singing to an audience of 4-500 on Saturday and over 700 the following day. It was just as well we had microphones and amplification.

We were glad we had decided to dress up since many of the Germans wore traditional costume. The women in our group wore mob caps, aprons and white blouses, while the men put on brown corduroy trousers, braces, flat caps and a red neckerchief.   We sang Sussex by the Sea (a must we were told), West Sussex Drinking Song and Thousands or More in our first session and Fathom the Bowl, Rosebuds, Thousands or More and Jolly Good Song for the second set. Our efforts were well received. The local paper even described us as lusty, according to David.

SDFS was invited as part of a twinning delegation from Lewes, which included a lively woman’s morris side called the Cuckoo’s Nest and two stonking bands. We are planning to see if any other twinning associations would like a bit of the real Sussex to liven up their events. Gollier.

John Lamb

The barrel is sprung